Dietrich
by Scarlet Secret
Summary: Lilah pays a visit to somebody who disturbs her sensibilities and life more than anybody she's ever known. Crossover with Harry Potter. Please RR!


Dietrich

Lilah had always had issues with Europeans.

It all stemmed back to her teenage love of old black and white movies in her estimation. She had loved them all, watching Bette Davis and Lauren Bacall blow smoke at various men and Rita Hayworth seducing whoever she damn well pleased. But Lilah had never been able to watch Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich without feeling vaguely uncomfortable. She supposed it was something deep rooted in her sexuality. Their unnerving gazes had seemed to stare straight at her, as though daring her to admit she found them attractive.

Not American stars. American stars were nice and heterosexual and did not make young girls feel like they were missing something in their own lives. They did not make you question your own sanity. And so when Lilah had to visit England she was ridiculously nervous. She reasoned that the English themselves had not given her that much trouble. Wesley was trouble, without doubt, but he was normal, male trouble. She always tried to avoid English women the best she could. It was one of the reasons she could not watch _Gone with the Wind _without a boyfriend present. Southern accent or not.

She didn't hate England as a country. Far from it. It relaxed her much more than America. The people on a whole kept to themselves and it was possible to spend an entire day without speaking to a single person. People were something she generally abhorred. Which is why it pissed her off so much her job involved talking to lots of them. The person she was visiting today though probably wouldn't have much to say.

And it was a good thing. An English woman who spoke may cripple her. Especially if said woman happened to be a witch.

One of the drawbacks (or perks depending on you life view) of working for Wolfram and Hart was that the company sometimes chose particularly evil people to offer contracts to in return for huge prices on the persons soul. And it was the unfortunate duty of the currently employed to take these contracts to said evil people. It was particularly unfortunate for Lilah that this person was quite beyond particularly evil. Even if she was subdued.

Lilah had been told about the fortress of Azkaban by colleagues and had read many reports on it, its inhabitant and the guards. But nothing quite prepared her for the feeling of absolute emptiness that hit her as the boat approached the prison.

"Yes, it isn't pleasant is it?"

If Lilah had not been feeling really quite ludicrously sea sick she would have responded with a glare. Or if she had heard her guide over the roar of the waves. The boat was apparently charmed to ensure water didn't soak its passengers, but Lilah was still very wary; this idiotic old man couldn't possibly be able to perform magic like that. Lilah had never liked magic.

A few years after her arrival at Wolfram and Hart she had won the Christmas raffle (yes, W&H did have one) which had enabled her to chose somebody dead to speak to through a complex bit of magic. Excited at first she had considered her options, then one of the men in the office had suggested she call forth the sprit of Marlene Dietrich, because she seemed like Lilah's sort of person. Without a moment's hesitation Lilah had stuffed the envelope into Lindsay's hands and told him to go talk to his recently deceased Grandfather. From then on she had dodged doing work that connected to powerful magic the best she could, delegating it to others who didn't want to deal with gruesome demons, which Lilah didn't have a problem with.

No, she had never liked magic. And when the wind seemed to rush past her head particularly quickly and a sudden burst of darkness overtook her she hated it more than ever. The man in the boat with her was staring at her with terror.

"The Dementors are gettin' very close to you, m'dear. Must be a lot of darkness in you."

She spun her head looking for the aforementioned guards but saw nothing but the grey horizon of the sea.

"Where the hell are they then?"

"Muggles can't see 'em."

She had never like the word 'muggle' either. For some reason it made her feel like such an idiot to fall into a category that was described with such an unattractive word. They sat in silence for the rest of the journey; Lilah felt as though she wouldn't be able to speak if she tried, her chest was becoming so heavy with despair. Eventually they docked and he began ushering her towards the doors of the fortress. To her immense surprise the doors opened without any prompting.

"They aren't locked?"

"Even if a prisoner gets out their cell where the 'ell would they go from here? There's nought but ocean for miles."

"I heard a man escaped from here last year. Something…Black."

"Sirius Black! Well 'e was proper evil wasn' 'e?"

"Of course the rest of the inhabitants are Santa's helpers."

Having no further answer to this the man ignored her began leading the way past the cells. Lilah didn't think she had ever seen, or indeed, smelt anything quite so disgusting. For a moment she considered getting outraged at the conditions these people were kept in then a small voice reminded her what these people had done. And that she was not really that much better than them and any antagonising on her part and the man might well leave her here too. Unconsciously she quickened her pace to walk beside him.

"Not much further. Ah, 'ere we go. Down that corridor, she's in the last cell. 'ere's the key, don't worry she can't hurt you."

"You're not coming with me!"

"She's 'armless now, but she still scares me. Bugger Merlin! I wouldn't go near 'er if me life depended on it."

With a withering look at the man Lilah turned from him and walked slowly towards the last cell, hearing her heels clicking and desperately clinging to the notion that she was still in charge like she was in her office. She looked through the small hole in the door at the woman in the stone cell and gasped.

She was slumped on the floor, her right hand clutching her left forearm where Lilah knew the infamous tattoo was. Her hair was dark and matted and Lilah could see that the rag she wore hung off her frame as though she were a skeleton. Her feet were bare and covered in cuts and scratches from the sharp rocks on the floor of her cell and Lilah hated herself for feeling some sympathy for this defeated woman, it was a weakness she knew but evil or not, she always felt a camaraderie with women and hated to see them suffering.

She knew she was safe here. English or not, Bellatrix Lestrange was so far from her glossy movies that she wouldn't awake anything in Lilah.

Then Bellatrix became aware of her presence and Lilah felt her assumptions come crashing down around her. The laughter from the darker woman's throat rung in Lilah's ears and she couldn't break her gaze from the hollow, black eyes.

"Ohhh, they've sent me a present have they? Who are you my pretty?"

Eventually finding her voice Lilah placed the key in the lock whilst speaking.

"I…er…Wolfram and Hart…", she coughed several times, "do you…know of us?"

She reasoned with herself that although that was really quite immensely pathetic SHE wasn't chained to a wall and sitting in her own filth.

"Can't say I do Princess. Come here and tell me."

Her gaze never wondered from Lilah's and the lawyer vaguely panicked when she considered whether Bellatrix Lestrange could read her mind. It would be something magical, therefore something the English-woman could do and it was something Lilah reviled. Another reason she hated magic – the intrusive nature of it.

For a brief moment she imagined that she could feel the darker woman's mind pressing against hers but she knew it was just her being paranoid and brushed it off. But still, she'd be cautious.

"We're a law firm. We specialise in cases such as yours. People who are…unusual and deserve legal help outside the normal sphere."

"Are you afraid of me, Princess?"

The question threw Lilah off-guard. Every instinct she had ever developed at Wolfram and Hart told her to deny it, preserve her position but she knew, without question that Bellatrix would know if she were lying. Still she was nothing if not a major player, and she gave nothing away that easily.

"Should I be?"

"Depends who you are. And what you want."

Lilah had to fight the urge to avert her eyes and therefore give away her game when Bellatrix dragged her right hand across that side of her body, lingering on her breast and eventually settling on her thigh after spending and inappropriate amount of time at her crotch.

_Of course she knows how to press my buttons,_ thought Lilah. _She's known since the second I walked in here. Damned witches! _

"So many thoughts in your pretty head. And you don't want any of them do you?"

Afterwards Lilah wished she had held her tongue rather than ask the question she knew she wouldn't like the answer to.

"You can read my thoughts?"

Bellatrix's cackle seemed to rattle though the entire prison and it certainly went straight to Lilah's bones, chilling them in the same unwelcome way that the Dementors had.

"No Princess I can't do that anymore. You should have seen me when I could."

Lilah tried not to think about this. She had a feeling that had she met the younger, beautiful Bellatrix Lestrange she would have been utterly destroyed with a single look. The witch could have ripped her beating heart from her chest and Lilah would still have thought she was the most wonderful being. As it was Lilah could clearly see the remains of that woman before her and she wasn't completely enraptured. Not completely.

"What…can you do? I mean…now you haven't got a…erm…wand thing."

Bellatrix fell completely silent at this and Lilah was briefly terrified she was about to find out first hand what the witch could still do but she simply sat, contemplating.

"Nothing."

"Nothing at all?"

"I hate it."

With a slightly sinking feeling Lilah realised that magic had absolutely nothing to do with the fondness she suddenly felt for Bellatrix Lestrange and tried valiantly to ignore it. It would have been so much easier to just leave if it had been magic – some spell of the witches, but she knew it was what was inside her. Lilah cursed her crippling curious nature that led her to her next question.

"What was it like before? I mean…what could you do?"

"Everything. I felt magic pulsing through my blood, the power was intoxicating. Your people aren't worthy of it - but I should like to show you one day."

"Why?"

"You're special. And I think you'd understand it."

Bellatrix's eyes never left hers and seemed to pierce straight through to her core.

"Understand what?"

"The feelings. Absolute power and watching people dying. Seeing families destroyed and. Just. Not. Giving. A. Damn."

The other woman cackled with mirth and Lilah finally understood what Bellatrix had been talking about all along and somewhat comforted moved further into the room.

"I get that all the time."

"It's an amoral world. She knows that better than we do really."

And in a split second Lilah lost the thread of the conversation once again.

"Who?"

"_Her. _She doesn't care about anyone. Never did. She was all blonde hair and blue eyes and she destroyed me…like you'll be destroyed."

"Wha-?"

Before she could finish Bellatrix lunged forwards with an unexpected speed and, though her chains wouldn't let her get very far, dragged Lilah down to the floor with her. In a moment of pain Lilah felt her kneecaps collide with the stone floor and was almost certain that a good pair of silk stockings had just been ruined, but strangely didn't care. Bellatrix's face was inches before her own and with a moment of insight she saw the beautiful woman that was once there reflected back in her eyes which still shone blue.

"_I don't understand._" She said hoarsely.

Bellatrix lunged forward like a snake and kissed her long and hard and true to what she had imagined Lilah thought the other woman was the most wonderful person in the world. Murders aside. Bellatrix's hands began wondering she let her touch and didn't complain when she was dragged completely onto the floor when the darker woman climbed on top, still kissing her.

She had a briefly moment of discomfort when Bellatrix shoved her hand underneath Lilah's skirt and began to roughly push her fingers inside her without any preamble, but really she doesn't mind all that much that she'll probably be sore for the journey home. And she desperately wants to take Bellatrix home with her. Away from this horrible, squalid place and to her apartment, with her pretty things.

Or maybe she just wants a secret to keep in the closet like Wesley did.

She'll admit to herself that even on this filthy floor it feels somehow right and she even moans with pleasure when Bella bites right through her bottom lip.

She can hear the howling of the wind around the fortress of Azkaban and cries silently that she has to go, because she can not say here, no matter how bad she's been in her life she doesn't belong here. Bella continues to fuck her roughly and she feels as though her world is going to explode, but not in the good way that Wesley brings, however she feels she needs to give Bella something. So she moans and writhes like a whore, all the while wishing that neither of them were here and that the bad sex wasn't happening.

Afterwards he tries to reciprocate thinking it's only polite and she does so want to touch Bellatrix, but she is pushed away. She kisses Bella again though and it's softer and then she stands up, straightens her skirt and goes to leave.

"Watch your head Princess."

By now she has gathered that most of what Bellatrix says is mad ramblings that would make Vivien Leigh sound sane. But she is still sad to go. She double-checks the lock is firmly back in position when she leaves.

Three and a half years later Lilah has died, been brought back by Wolfram and Hart and worked for several months in a very amoral atmosphere before Angel had decided to change time.

In the new time-line Lilah never died but she had drifted away from the fight really, the good side and bad. Occasionally she longs for Wesley, but sometimes she longs for Marlene Dietrich so she is quite sure that her attachment to Wesley, although she admits to herself was love, was cut short before she got to the can't live without him stage. She heard he died a couple of years back and remembers crying a great deal for him, and she surprised herself by crying for the rest of their motley crew.

Of course she had never really known Charles Gunn or Lorne or even Spike, but she knew they were good men and she has known so few of them in her life. It was years after the event before she heard about what happened to Fred Burkle and she felt no remorse for the woman and no disgust with herself when she had smiled and cackled herself to sleep that night. Angel's disappearance (even now she refused to think him dead) had somehow hit her worse than Wesley's. She, Wesley and the Dream Team were infallible and human and all the other bad things that went with a heart beat and a reflection, but Angel was immortal and supposed to live. He was supposed to be the champion. It comforted her for a long time to know that she had outlived them all. Occasionally she thinks she sees Cordelia in a shoe shop and sometimes she wishes she had seen her, but naturally it never happens. Sometimes she even considers tracking down Drusilla, who seems to be the only other person from her wicked life that has survived. But she knows this is insane.

Then, one dreadful day, through the dark grapevine she hears about the Wizarding War in England and she begins to follow it, using every resource she can.

She hears about Lord Voldemort's return and Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived who is now a young man, and Sirius Black, the man who's name she had once forgotten being a dead hero, and Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the age dying, and Severus Snape, who was finally revealed to NOT be a traitor and Neville Longbottom, who had swung the sword of Godric Gryffindor and Lucius Malfoy who had betrayed his Master for love of his son Draco and Fenrir Greyback, the feared werewolf who had been killed by Ron Weasley, one of the great heroes of the war.

However Lilah once again feel betrayed by herself and her own mind and body. She pays little attention to these men, who she knows are brave but she can't force herself to idolise.

Instead, she saves the picture of the ageless Minerva McGonagall, the new Headmistress of Hogwarts, admires the uncanny intellect of Hermione Granger, marvels at the special skills of Nymphadora Tonks whom she mourns although she has never met, loves the ruthlessness of Rita Skeeter and reads her religiously, feels she could never love half as strongly as Lily Potter did, cries when she hears the story of Alice Longbottom for the second time, manages sympathy for Narcissa Malfoy, learns to hate Delores Umbridge and all that she stood for, adores the beauty of Fleur Delacour and debates in her own mind whether Sybill Trelawney is a fraud.

She can not bring herself to look at an article in one newspaper, written by Rita Skeeter, with more underlying compassion and sorrow than one would have thought possible for the subject. Lilah wonders till the days she dies whether Rita Skeeter was the blond witch she was once told about, the one who was the love of _her _life.

Bellatrix Lestrange is dead. The paper seemed very excited about this fact and reported the death as though it is a national celebration. Lilah wept for hours. Days even. Although she had not really known Bellatrix the thought of the woman she had never stopped thinking about lying stone cold dead made her sob. For ages afterwards she considers going to Wolfram and Hart and offering them whatever it took to resurrect Bellatrix Lestrange, but Lilah knows Bella would not appreciate being in somebody's debt.

She had called her Bella in her head since she met the other woman but she wonders whether anybody ever called her that to her face and lived to tell the tale.

She travels to England alone although she doesn't really know why because there's nothing at all for her to find there. The magical community is very secretive, even on bad days, and now Lilah doesn't have her Wolfram and Hart contacts it's nearly impossible to find anything.

She stays in England for several months before realising it's a waste of time. Then one day she sees a woman who looks exactly like Bellatrix but isn't quite her pushing a pram containing a small toddler with orange hair. Needless to say she follows the woman to a pub in the middle of London, which Lilah has to look twice at before she's certain it's there.

The second she walks towards it she remembers appointments for that day. Her body seems to move independently from her mind as it moves in the other direction but the image of Bellatrix's face and her cackle-like laugh pushes itself forward in Lilah's mind and she forcibly heads to the pub, resisting the almost overwhelming urge from her body to go the other way.

She still hated magic.

Because in the end her body won and before she even had the chance to try and fight back she was in Trafalgar Square, unable to remember why she was there or how she had got there.

She knew it had something to do with Bellatrix. Something to do with magic and she knows that somebody has tampered with her mind, but of course, she doesn't know how.

After returning to her hotel room Lilah spends hours wondering why she is in England. She wonders if it is something to do with Wesley, but she can't quite remember. She doubts he is involved, but he is her only real connection with England. Somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks of long, matted, tangled, black hair; but as quickly as it is there it is gone.

Completely lost she returns to America and continues with her life, forgetting that she had ever been lost in England, not even trying to remember the reason she was there. Eventually she even forgets magic and the Wizarding wars that enraptured her so much.

Thirty-five years later she is impressed she has lived so long, but still can't remember any reason why she shouldn't do so.

She spends most days sat alone in her tasteful home waiting for the inevitable to happen, drinking gin and smoking like it is going out of fashion, reasoning that to not do these things is only prolonging something she wants over really.

It occurs to her occasionally that she is a recluse like Greta Garbo and her fears about the woman's piercing gaze have long since abated. So she spends her days watching old movies, the older the better. The money she has raised through her lucrative career mean she can buy anything she fancies. But her fancies have turned from diamonds and limousines and she has bought every film Marlene Dietrich ever made.

And one day, about a week before Lilah is found by her neighbour having suffered a heart attack a few days before, she listens to _Lili Marlene _and remembers a flash of sparking violet eyes. And suddenly it all comes flooding back.

She smiles as she dies, wondering if she was bad enough in her former existence at Wolfram and Hart to join Bella wherever she is.

If not she'll settle for Dietrich.


End file.
